Us Kooks Pick Overlooked Books

Our choice of books we feel should be better known…

Feature by Multiple Authors - names in piece. | 08 Sep 2007
Everyone has their favourite books, but the writers at the Skinny have a number of favourites that you may not have heard of. So we, the Skinny writing staff, present our choice of books we feel should be better known…


Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
By Vitezslav Nezval, translated from the Czech by David Short

Writen in 1935 at the height of Czech Surrealism, this bizarre erotic fantasy of a young girl's maturation into womanhood only became available in English in 2005. It is part fairy tale, part Gothic novel. It contains all the elements: a vampire with a taste for chicken blood, a lecherous priest, the protective powers of pearl earrings, changelings, a grandmother desiring her lost youth and an androgynous merging between a brother and sister. Its power resides in Nezval's delicate, simple and dream-like prose. It is an enchanting exploration of fundamentals: youth and age, sexuality and death. [Caroline Walters]


The Member of the Wedding
By Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers is often overlooked in favour of her peers - writers such as Jane Bowles, Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. Her short novel The Member of the Wedding is typical of her writing; poignant, painfully real and bursting with insight. It deserves to be as widely read as any of the modernists. The novel tells the story of Frankie, a girl on the cusp of adolescence, in the lead-up to her brother's wedding. It exquisitely captures Frankie's awakening to the essential loneliness of the human condition and is both beautiful and profound. [Laurel Wilson]


Gagarin Way
By Gregory Burke

It's sad to consider that most modern drama is going to be overlooked, especially with gems like Gagarin Way among the dross. Written by Gregory Burke, this debut play is funny, brutal and as much of a joy to read as it is to watch. Centring on an attempted act of revolution gone wrong, the play is an incisive critique of the economy, masculinity, class and terrorism. Essential reading for anyone who's ever worked in a factory, gone through a brief (or not so brief) communist phase, or who just likes their literature with a healthy dollop of Scots dialect. [Lauren O'Rourke]


Atlas of the Human Heart
By Ariel Gore

Ariel Gore bought a one-way ticket to Hong Kong when she was sixteen and spent the next few years bluffing and smuggling her way around Asia, befriending a child pickpocket and narrowly escaping a massacre. This book is as exciting as that sounds. By comparison, when I was sixteen I spent a lot of time drinking cider on the pier. Which was also as exciting as it sounds. [Nine]


Dangerous Visions
Edited by Harlan Ellison

Dangerous Visions is an angry, delinquent, mould-breaking collection of speculative fiction stories penned exclusively for this anthology by the cream of the SF crop, "from Asimov to Zelaney" (an order both alphabetical and chronological). Curator/editor Harlan Ellison is one of the finest SF writers of all time but never really became a household name in the UK, his fame overshadowed by Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick. His selections are awesome. Look out particularly for Ellison's own Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World and Brian Aldiss's The Night that All Time Broke Out. Just brilliant. [Rob Westwoood]


Marriage
By Susan Ferrier

Marriage by Susan Ferrier, first published in 1818, would come very close to my personal short list of the best novels ever written. Think Jane Austen with a Scottish twist. It's a period comedy/drama set in the Highlands and, as the title suggests, focuses on marriage. A controversial novel of its time, it is superbly comical and witty, introducing grotesque caricatures and absurd marital situations, then allowing us to be taken along with the demise of nuptial bliss. By far one of the most entertaining novels I have read and, I think, greatly overlooked! [Fran Hagar]


A Girl Becomes A Comma Like That
By Lisa Glatt

This book is divided into several parts, telling the stories of four different women in Los Angeles. The principal character, however, is Rachel Spark, frequently picking up men in the hope that one of them will still be around when her mother dies of breast cancer. It's a poignant but beautiful story about loss, and a comfort if you've been through anything similar. [Nine]


Franny and Zooey
By JD Salinger

Let's assume one thing: everyone's read The Catcher in the Rye. You've been there and done that. Why not Franny and Zooey? This slim volume (a story and novella named 'Franny' and 'Zooey' respectively) discusses the Glass family, recurring characters in Salinger's work. The themes of Catcher – depression, artificiality, loss - are present in a simpler, more adult form, with none of that novel's tenderness lost. The narrator is not the cutting, cynical Holden but instead the weary, warm Buddy, something of an alter-ego for Salinger. Read this, and the rest of his oeuvre. Sadly, it won't take you long. [Lauren O'Rourke]
Lots and lots of words here - if the piece needs cut for the print version, delete book reviews from the bottom of the piece, because that's where I've put pieces by writers who already have pieces further up.